


Heat Signature

by Alistra (ALeaseInWonderland)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:06:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23757331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ALeaseInWonderland/pseuds/Alistra
Summary: Sometimes it takes losing your mind to find what really matters. Or: Clint is hurt and has rambling thinky-thoughts.Warning:  Suffering from vague, off-screen injuries. Stream of (lost) consciousness and blood. So much blood. But it all ends well.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Heat Signature

He's lost a shitload of blood, there's no sugarcoating it. 

The edges of his perception are soft and fuzzy, sight and sound misaligned and dragging. It's nothing to worry about.

Or is it? It's hard to focus enough to worry.

"Hey, Hawkeye, open your eyes for me?"

The low voice winds around his addled mind like a cat slinking around a person's legs; warm and soft and a little bit aimless and wow - that train of thought strikes even himself as weird.

"Never even liked cats..." he slurs incomprehensibly. The metallic-taste in his mouth is getting old and getting in the way of breathing and, oh god, coughing hurts something awful.

"Easy, easy. Hold on now, we're almost here." Natasha. It's Natasha talking to him, which shouldn't come as a surprise. "Dr. Cho is already waiting. You'll be okay. Come on, Hawkeye, look at me..."

She's not using his name, which means they aren't safe yet. Which means her calm and collected voice is likely for show, so he has to follow her request and look at her to make sure she's alright herself. If only his eyelids weren't so heavy. 

"Hi there." 

She's smiling at him. There’s stone dust and grit in the tangled curls tumbling over her face and a smear of something dark on her cheekbone, almost as if she hastily wiped her eyes with bloody hands. The worried crease on her forehead smoothes out slightly as their eyes meet.

He's not sure he's ever seen anything more beautiful.

Her palm gently cups his jaw to stop him from trying to speak and it strikes him just how warm her hands are. Always. Even though they've been fighting in a meatlocker - why was that again? - only minutes ago - or has it been hours? - she's still so warm. 

Blessed blackness descends for a few precious moments, wrapping around him like a comfortably worn blanket. Clint's mind drifts, yearning for the lifeline of Natasha's warmth imprinting on his skin, but the pull towards the fathomless cold where nothing hurts is far too tempting. 

He's always preferred the warm. 

Back when they'd still spent countless days playing Let's Find New and Innovative Reasons to Yell at Each Other, Bobbi would wake him in the middle of the night with freezing feet against his calves or startle him out of his concentration with a cool palm against his neck. 

Inside the abyss of his spiralling mind, a parade of icy-fingered women pass by.  
Maria Hill's crisp, respectful handshake. Kate Bishop's nippy high five after she hit a perfect X on the target range. Jessica Drew flipping him off with a long, snow-white digit before walking out of his life for the last time. Marcella Carson's frigid slap across his still-boyish face for a reason he doesn't care to remember. His mother, feeling his clammy forehead as he shivers with fever. Why is he shivering still? Who will care for him now if he calls out?

The slight jostling of the jet setting down has him groaning, dragging him painfully back to the surface and causing him to draw rattling, ugly, wet-sounding breaths of disorientation.

"You'll be okay," Natasha says, with those scorching hands moving to his shoulders, - those blazing hands burning pleasantly into the leathers of his uniform and grounding him more effectively than any restraint. Preventing him from further injuring himself - though is that even possible? The internal inventory trying to find just one single cell in his body that isn't screaming keeps coming up empty.

When he manages to direct his gaze at her again, the plane's rear hatch has begun to open and the backlighting turns her hair into a halo of flames. In slow-motion, or maybe just in his delayed reaction time, her lips quirk into that smile that's a completely different type of 'hot' and he finds himself grinning back, teeth probably smeared red. 

Suddenly, Dr. Cho is there, lifting his eyelid to shine a light in his eyes, gloved fingers frosty as if to confirm his wandering thoughts.

Swallowing hard against the blood and harder still against the following sense of sickness, he tries to lock eyes with his partner as he rasps, "You're not like the other women in my life..." as if that made perfect sense and wasn't at the same time the most hilarious understatement he's ever heard.

"I sure hope not," Natasha replies just as quietly, but she's smiling that secretive smirk that is only for him at his dumbest, so he allows his eyes to slide shut.

Despite the state he is in, Clint knows this is about more than body heat or the ones who left. But as he’s transported to the Med Bay and his consciousness slips away again, the heat of Natasha's firm grip once again seeps into his own hand, and he rests in the knowledge that she will be with him when he wakes. 

In more ways than one.

**Author's Note:**

> Immeasurable gratitude once more to [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/pseuds/CloudAtlas) whose beta is speedy, thorough and patient and who gifted this fic with the 19th and final version of That One Sentence That Wouldn't Fit when I'd started pulling out my hair over it. 
> 
> The women passing through Clint's life are collected through a rather vague knowledge of comicverse. Do share your thoughts on the subject, if you have any.  
> Marcella Carson is the daughter of the ringmaster and owner of Carson's Carnival of Travelling Wonders, the circus Clint used to work at as a young man. 
> 
> Girls, slapping boys is not okay. Boys, slapping girls is also not okay. Generally, slapping is not a good way to express your emotions.  
> Use your words. 
> 
> Or I'll tell your mothers.


End file.
